Hotel Highlights

Unique setting in a national park and former US army base

Spa, cookery classes and natural beauty on your doorstep

Close to San Francisco’s nightlife and Napa’s wineries

Overview

Cavallo Point in California, sister property to Big Sur's Post Ranch Inn, is a historic boutique hotel spread across old officers’ quarters and solar-panelled new builds just south of the shops and seafood of Sausalito.

Smith Extra

Here's what you get for booking Cavallo Point with us:

$50 resort credit; SilverSmith and GoldSmith members also get a breakfast for two per night booked

Facilities

Need To Know

Rooms

Check–out

Rates

Double rooms from $389.00, excluding tax at 14 per cent. Please note the hotel charges an additional service charge of $25.00 per room per night on check-out. ⓘ

More details

Rates exclude breakfast (from US$12) and a 14 per cent national park fee.

Also

Aside from the superior treatments, the serene spa has its own tea bar, where guests can order frozen Mayan cacao, goji berry and lime coladas and freshly made soup (but don't worry, sweet tooths can still enjoy a pastry-fuelled afternoon tea).

At the hotel

Our favourite rooms

Pick between historic and contemporary: the former are housed in whitewashed former military quarters, perfect for fans of cosiness. If it’s Golden Gate views you’re after, go for a contemporary room with a deck.

Poolside

As part of the Healing Arts Center and Spa, there’s an outdoor meditation area, equipped with a small heated pool (for guests 16 and older), shower and springy-grassed garden.

Packing tips

This is a land of Indian Summers, and it’s often far warmer in September and October. A handbag-size sweater will always be useful – the fog can roll in at any moment.

Also

Dog-friendly rooms with bed and bowls are available for US$75 extra. The hotel hosts regular cookery classes, with visiting guests invited to share their expertise.

Children

All ages are welcome, and the restaurant has a dedicated children’s menu. Cots and extra beds can be provided free. Babysitting costs US$20 an hour, plus a 35 per cent agency service charge, four-hour minimum.

Children

Overview

All ages are welcome, and the restaurant has a dedicated children’s menu. Cots and extra beds can be provided free. Babysitting costs US$20 an hour, plus a 35 per cent agency service charge, four-hour minimum.

Best for

Active fans of the outdoors.

Recommended rooms

Go for a Historic Two-bedroom Suite, Contemporary Two Queen or Historic King with Sitting Area.

Activities

One of America's best children's museums shares Cavallo Point's cove: take them along to the Bay Area Discovery Museum (www.baykidsmuseum.org). Alcatraz is also nearby. Slide Ranch has sheep, goats and chickens roaming about.

Meals

Children are welcome in the restaurant, where they'll have their own mini menu. Baby food and milk can be warmed up on request.

Babysitting

An agency can provide babysitters for US$20 (plus a 35 per cent service charge) an hour, four-hour minimum.

Also

There's 75,000 acres of national park on your doorstep so let them run wild.

Food & Drink

◐View Gallery

Hotel Restaurant

Murray Circle restaurant is housed in a grand room in one of the historic buildings on site, kitted out with tin ceilings, fine art, fireplaces and Golden Gate views. The local market's freshest daily produce is cooked up, and there's plenty of newly caught seafood on offer. If you can’t decide, go for the tasting menu and sample your way through the chef's signature selection.

Hotel Bar

The gentleman’s club-like Farley Bar serves up small plates, creative cocktails, microbrewery beers and almost every spirit conceivable. The bar itself was crafted from a fallen tree. On Monday nights, local musicians take to the stage for sax, piano and flute recitals.

Last orders

Breakfast is served from 7am until 10am; lunch is 11.30am until 2pm (2.30pm for brunches at weekends); dinner is available from 5.30pm until 10pm (11pm on Fridays and Saturdays). The bar shuts at 11pm during the week and midnight at weekends.

Room service

Dishes from the restaurant can be ordered between 7am and 11pm.

Smith Insider

Dress code

Wartime wardrobes: khaki for Mr Smith, victory rolls for Mrs Smith.

Top table

Snug in the romantic back corner for the best view; out on the front porch if the fog's blown away.

Local Guide

Worth getting out of bed for

The hotel is in a national park so there’s adventure all around. Rent a kayak from Sea Trek (+1 415 332 8494; www.seatrek.com) and paddle your way around the bay. Ask a hotel guide to show you the sights of the Golden Gate National Park, or make your way to Alcatraz for a tour of the incarceration island.

Local restaurants

For a friendly brunch at shared tables, try Fred’s (+1 415 332 4575) on Bridgeway in Sausalito. Don’t miss the slender Swedish pancakes. Down the road, hang out on the deck of Horizons (+1 332 415 3232; www.horizonssausalito.com) for daytime dining with cocktails.

Reviews

Anonymous review

I don’t know about you, but when I hear that the place we are going to be staying at is a former army barracks, my first thoughts are of being woken in the freezing cold dawn to do push-ups while a man in a buzz cut yells at me. Thankfully, the good sybarite-friendly people that run the Cavallo Point Lodge aren’t as crazy as to think the same, so instead they have created a serene and …

Cavallo Point

Anonymous review by Rove McManus, Let me entertain you

I don’t know about you, but when I hear that the place we are going to be staying at is a former army barracks, my first thoughts are of being woken in the freezing cold dawn to do push-ups while a man in a buzz cut yells at me. Thankfully, the good sybarite-friendly people that run the Cavallo Point Lodge aren’t as crazy as to think the same, so instead they have created a serene and welcoming environment perfect for enjoying the Sausalito bay area of San Francisco.

The former Fort Baker has been sustainably restored to a level of sophisticated comfort that will have you wanting to enlist as soon as possible. This sweeping patch of federal land on the edge of Golden Gate National Park makes for a unique luxury hotel setting. Built on what was once a US army base, whitewashed old military quarters with red roofs and wrap-around porches form half of the digs. The other half of the rooms are contemporary, newly constructed from entirely renewable resources, with views of the Golden Gate itself.

Don’t panic when you’re handed a torch to get around at night: this is the one – and only – campsite similarity. At Cavallo Point, there may be no escaping the military heritage in the unused parade grounds, mismatched building numbers and signs to Fort Baker. These days though, the natural wonders of the green, green national park is what speaks loudest, and the estate’s a sight for scenery fans.

Having checked in at the main building (as is often the case, you can’t access your room until 4pm), it is but a short stroll up the hill to our accommodation. At least that’s what Mrs Smith and I are told: this pair have decided to take full advantage of the golf cart shuttle service, so we can’t accurately tell you ourselves. Carry on, driver.

There is barely enough time to enjoy our in-room fireplace (while dressed in the stupidly comfortable robe and slippers provided), before we each galvanise our inner Action Man to make full use of at least one of the many hiking trails around the lodge. One in particular winds up the back of the property, at Mount Tamalpais, where you get a properly rock-star view of San Francisco proper, as well as Alcatraz and that looming iconic suspension bridge.Backdropped by redwood forest, looking out a the Pacific Ocean, the panorama near took our breath away... although that might have been our fitness levels on that hiking trail. Ahem. Where are those darned golf buggies when you really need them?

I continue down the track to Horseshoe Cove where I spot a harbor seal. It is either that or an especially unattractive swimmer. Mrs Smith, meanwhile, is making like a beached creature in the Healing Arts Spa enjoying everything from a massage to hypnotherapy, revelling in the landscaped pool area. Note: this is a meditation pool, meaning it is a place for peacefully dipping into its heated waters to soak your stresses away, not, as Mrs Smith tells me, for the usual Mr Smith trick of bombing off a diving board shouting ‘Honey, look at me!’

The relaxation powers of this spa hits you in the face like a fluffy pillow, the instant you enter a waiting area that resembles a lavish library with an adjoining exotic tearoom. ‘Be sure to set aside an hour or two around your treatment time to make full use of all that this gorgeous spa has to offer,’ Mrs Smith has told me. ‘I certainly could have used an extra half hour to finish the modern art work I was happily colouring in from the books and crayons provided, while waiting for my name to be called,’ she added, earnestly. Well, this is California after all.

Now – the Murray Circle. This restaurant is as historic as the hotel; you can only imagine the secretive wartime conversations that once took place here. Dinner at this more serious of the two eateries is a must, especially after a few drinks on the veranda of the adjacent Farley Bar (where to go for snacks and cocktails). The likes of the raised lamb and Dungeness crab are so delectable the only sane thing to do after this initiation to chef Joseph Humphrey’s cooking is to request our dessert be his tasting selection. If sinful puds are a court-martialing offense, then that espresso mousse cake will be putting chef Humphrey away for good. Or, as is more likely the case, it will soon be earning him another medal in the form of a Michelin star.

So special is the dining experience you may find you want to have a pop at appropriating some of their kitchen’s skills yourself. The good news: the Lodge even provides cookery lessons. Yup: cooking classes. Isn’t that the coolest idea thing? 20 people all getting hands-on with the all-organic ingredients for a fun three hours in a bright, friendly environment that’ll improve your culinary skills, whatver your expertise. If I managed to leave with all my fingers intact, then anyone can do it.

As we return to our room to pick up where our slippers and fireplace left off, one traditional military term seemed to fit, summing the whole experience up perfectly: at ease, soldier.

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Price information

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